Date of Award

January 2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Energy Engineering

First Advisor

Hossein Salehfar

Second Advisor

Tomomewo S. Olusegun

Abstract

The energy grid is under a constant state of evolution from outside factors such as the rise ofrenewable energy in the form of solar and wind generation as well as competing with the changes in weather patterns from climate change leading to significant storms like the arctic event of 2022. Thermal power plants are greatly impacted by these changes. As a significant contributor of CO2 emissions, thermal power plants play an important role in emerging green technology policies to help the efforts of climate change. There is a significant cost associated with this change, however, as thermal plants are some of the cheapest to implement and have provided baseline power supply for decades for both first world countries and especially those still under development. An emerging technology that can bridge the gap between these two ideologies is carbon capture systems, which take the emissions normally emitted to the environment and allow them to be captured for storage later. Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) is not without its tradeoffs though. There is a significant change, of about 15%, in the power generation capability of the plant it is installed on, which can have drastic impacts on a grid already impacted by so many other changes. To combat these difficulties, flexible variations of thermal plants are being brought forth, but the capabilities of these options compared to the traditional is notional. This study used a simulation-based approach to quantify these impacts. The simulations evaluated traditional thermal plants, their flexible counterparts, renewable energy hosting, and the capabilities of both in regard to carbon capture installations. Using results from the developed model, the benefits of pairing flexible plants with dynamic CCS units show that additional renewable energy and load can be hosted, as well as show the limitations that those parameters exhibited.

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